


took my crown of thorns

by maplemood



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Guilt, Post-Season/Series 03, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplemood/pseuds/maplemood
Summary: He crops up in her dreams like he’s been doing almost since the first time they met in the hospital room, behind the line of tape—the murky, slow-moving dreams that always leave an ache stuck deep in the pit of Karen’s gut.





	took my crown of thorns

**Author's Note:**

> My Kastle Christmas gift for @skullsandwhiteroses on tumblr! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, and I'm sorry this came in so late. You said you liked the tension and ambiguity of Frank & Karen's relationship, and since I personally find their relationship to be at its most tense and ambiguous in s2 of _Daredevil_ , I tried to call back a bit to that dynamic while still writing a story set at the present point in canon. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for being so wonderful and patient. <3

In the gap, the crack that opens up between rooftop strategy sessions and ringside trial prep, after the church, after Matt, Karen takes herself home. Climbs into the shower first thing, blasting hot water in the hope that it’ll calm her down, wash away the buzz still prickling under her skin. Too wired to sleep, she’s brittle with exhaustion, eyes blinking dry; she stares at her soap dish a good five minutes, head bent, the water running cold. Back in the kitchen before she’s even toweled her hair off, she digs through her purse for the burner phone.

Karen stares at it at least as long as she stared at the soap dish. Switches it on, switches it off. Switches it on again, and off again, and finally puts it back in her purse.

Four months. He’s stayed gone longer. Karen goes to bed, where she tosses and turns until morning.

***

A trial, two funerals—life goes on.

***

Life goes on, but it’s slower now. That’s the one part of digging up ugly stories Karen can say she misses—the blinders that narrow her focus to a single point, the high of a new lead. New trails she can follow as far as they’ll take her, a world sped up, bled down to knife-quick black and white. She’s never been great with routines. Never really wanted to settle down.

She comes into the office three days a week. For now, that’s all Matt and Foggy can afford, and secretly Karen hopes it’s all they’ll be able to afford for a while. She likes the work, loves them, but she’s gotten used to being on her own again, and this time around, Karen thinks she’s started to enjoy it. Not the loneliness—the space she fills with her words, her stories. Work of her own. Her whole life, Karen’s worked for someone else. It’s been a hard habit to break.

It _is_ a hard habit to break. The burner cell sits in her purse, and Karen has to convince herself at least a couple times a month that he isn’t waiting on her call. _Give him time, give him space._ Wherever Frank is, she hopes he’s found space. Acres of it, broad and peaceful.

***

“Hey there,” Foggy says. “Earth to Karen.”

“Huh?” She looks up, the card in her hand, and pushes a smile. “We’d better crack a window,” Karen says, “unless you want this place smelling like a greenhouse.”

“What’s that, two dozen roses?”

“Three dozen, I think.”

“Yeah, Mr. Antonelli’s niece runs a florist’s.” Foggy squeezes past her to jimmy open the window. “You were giving them this spaceman look,” he says. “Spacegirl? Spacewoman? You okay?”

“Hmm?” She should separate them out. A vase on each desk, not that they have even one vase. Coffee cans would work. Karen stares at the roses, crepey swirls of coral pink. Not a speck of white in them.

It’s been six months, so far, of radio silence.

“Coming through again,” Foggy says, and this time Karen remembers to step out of the way.

“Sorry,” she says. “Just thinking.”

***

She’s been thinking about fathers quite a bit since Father Lantom’s funeral. Father Lantom, who was more Matt’s than hers—she can only miss him from the handful of times they met, though even one time would have been more than enough. He had a goodness to him, Karen knows, a steadiness. Then, she thinks of Dad, back in Vermont and still somehow keeping the diner just barely afloat. Ray, and the mess he got himself into just trying to help his family. Ellison, too stubborn to hire her back but not stubborn enough to skip when she asks him to meet up for coffee.

Frank.

Karen remembers the photos: Frank grinning on the carousel, Frank kissing Maria’s belly. She remembers the roughness snagging his voice whenever he talked about his family, the rage surfacing. Sparking, sometimes. She remembers hitting the deck as Lewis’s bomb went off, eyes tearing up, throat burning, and Frank looming over her on one elbow, his hand, huge, cupped to the base of her skull.

Karen remembers, and then she pictures him, his bruises and black eyes, his lump of a nose, his head and face gray with a haze of stubble. He crops up in her dreams like he’s been doing almost since the first time they met in the hospital room, behind the line of tape—the murky, slow-moving dreams that always leave an ache stuck deep in the pit of Karen’s gut.

It’s early morning. Sun’s barely up, and she’s stretched out across her bed. Frank’s sitting beside her, his weight dipping the mattress. His fingers tracing each hollow between Karen’s ribs, tapping them, he says, “You gotta stop eating all that shit, huh? Too damn skinny.”

Or—

He’s sitting on the edge of her bed again, his back to her. It’s Karen reaching out this time, tracing his scars, the trail of his spine. Then up again, over one shoulder, around his ear. His neck folds when he turns his head to her. Karen rests her hand there.

Every time she wakes slowly, rolling over and trying to fall back to sleep. Finally, Karen drags herself up, pads into the kitchen and stares into her fridge. She tells herself she’ll buy more fresh vegetables, pack salads to bring to work. Then she brews a cup of coffee. Drinking it by the window, she thinks she’ll have to tell him, if he comes back.

She’s been remembering Kevin, too. More than usual, if that’s possible; she’s been seeing him in snapshots, like she sees Frank, frozen over the grill or on their back porch, fishing with Dad, sitting cross-legged in the back of the pickup with her.

Someone ordered a wreath of white roses for Mom’s funeral. Karen can’t remember who. Kevin snapped off one of the flowers and shredded it during the eulogy, crumples of petal scattering over the floor and his black pants. He was sitting next to her, and halfway through she grabbed his hand. “Stop it.”

He yanked it away. “You stop. Nobody cares.”

“Yeah, well, I do.”

It’s almost seven-thirty. Time to go. Karen dumps the rest of her coffee into the sink.

***

The lair—she’s tried, but she really can’t think of it as anything else—smells like old shoes and coffee. Dark roast. The glow off the computer screens pulses behind Karen’s eyes like a headache.

“You know,” says David, and the way he says it tells her he’s been mulling over the next sentence for days, maybe weeks, “all you’d have to do is call him.”

“I know.”

“Okay then.” He hands over the jump drive, stretches the kinks out of his back, and shoots Karen a grin going sharp at the edges. “You two are a pair of stubborn fucks.”

She hooks her purse over her shoulder. The phone rattles around at the bottom with her keys and loose change and chapstick. “Appreciate it, David.”

“Let me know how it goes.” He reaches for his mug. “Don’t be a stranger.”

***

Karen knows what David thinks: they had a fight, some kind of blowout, before Frank left. They didn’t, and it’s not like she doesn’t spend entire workdays telling herself that this time she really will call him, just as soon as she gets home. Just as soon as she sorts through the bills, just as soon as she finishes this article. She wants to hear his voice.

It’s not as simple as that, though. Or it is, and she’s just too tired; some days Karen feels like she’s been exhausted since that night at the church, sleepwalking ever since. She’s too tired to dial his number and sort through the emotions she knows a call will stir up; it’s not the sharp edges of them that bother Karen so much as the fact that they’ll probably never be resolved. And why does Frank need that, anyway, what good’s it going to do him to know all the shit that went down when he wasn’t here? He’ll find it all out if he comes back.

She’s not angry with him. In the middle of paying the bills or typing up an article, Karen will picture him in the woods she remembers from back home, teaching Frankie and Lisa how to start a fire or pitch a tent. She’ll remember doing those things herself, she and Kevin crouching by the firepit. Karen remembers her brother, and she pictures herself sitting next to Frank, saying, “I need to tell you something—”

The picture never stretches any farther than that.

***

And then. Eight months since she saw him last, Karen runs into Frank on the street corner. It’s a Saturday, and she has her purse over her shoulder and a grocery bag in each hand, and she doesn’t drop them, but it’s a close call.

He’s wearing creased jeans and a sweatshirt. Kept the buzzcut this time around. There’s a greenish bruise healing on his temple. Karen stares at it. Her eyes are hot, her mouth dry.

“You were out,” Frank says, and she realizes she forgot the exact sound of his voice, the rumble of it, words dredged up from the quarry’s worth of gravel stuck in his throat. They’re standing on the corner of her block; the bodega where she does most of her shopping is only two blocks down. “I figured—”

“Frank.” Wind’s blowing, hair’s flapping in her face. Karen lifts one hand, trying to scrape it back. The bag slides down into the crook of her elbow.

He reaches out. “You want me to get those?”

***

“You know, I was off the grid,” says Frank. Like somehow she’s forgotten. “Didn’t hear about the shit with Fisk ‘till maybe a week ago.”

“David brought you up to speed?” Karen drops her purse and unbuttons her coat. Her eyes are still hot, and an itch, the weight of his eyes, prickles the back of her neck.

He grunts. “He told me you made it out of that church just fine,” Frank says. “Not a scratch on you.”

Thing is, she can feel the question he isn’t asking thickening in the air like the looks he shot her over coffee mugs, under the rims of hoods or baseball caps. Flat and silent and considering. Karen steps out of her shoes and crosses over into the kitchen. She yanks the fridge door open fast enough that something in her shoulder jolts. “You’re lucky.” She hears her voice, doesn’t like the sound of it. “Tonight I was finally going to try cooking something for a change. Garlic pasta.”

The bags rustle as Frank sets them on the table. Karen blinks into the emptiness of her fridge, the half-finished six-pack shoved to the back blurring. Eventually she grabs two bottles but leaves them on the counter when she turns and walks around the table, into him. Frank’s arms come up before hers do. He squeezes Karen cautiously and without any real force until she squeezes back, both arms hooked under his.

“I’m sorry.” Her throat grates and stings. “It’s just—”

If is always the question with him, not when.

***

Murky, slow-moving: her rumpled sheets slashed across with sunlight. The mattress creaking. Rasp of stubble, calluses. A rush of hot breath in her mouth. Each bump and swell of his nose, the feel of them under her fingertips.

Pressing her voice to his ear: “Roll over, Frank.”

The sound he makes—half a grunt, half a laugh—passes through him, into her, and shudders up through Karen’s belly.

Grinning. “You heard me.” Then: upright, her legs clenched at his hips. Moving together, the same hot bursts of breath. Karen sees her head fall back, the stretch of her neck, feels his fingers digging into her, dimpling her skin. Passing through them both like water, cresting, breaking—gleam of hair. It settles around her face as slowly as a mermaid’s. “Where were you?” Karen pants. She whispers, “You never told me.”

Frank looking up at her, his eyes sharp when Karen’s are half-lidded, the bruise on his temple fresh and black. “All you had to do was call,” he says.

She wakes up alone, without an answer.

***

Life settles. It always does. Frank finds more construction work and an apartment in the Bronx. He even invites Karen over once he’s moved in—a housewarming party that amounts to the two of them sitting at a rickety card table, forking up chicken and pork lo mein.

“And you said my fridge was bare.” She pushes her half-empty carton in, then checks the freezer. “Oh, look. Stouffer’s.”

“I never said that.” Frank sucks down another forkful of noodles with a slurp. “I said you ate like you were still in college.”

“So—like shit.”

“Yeah.” He twists his fork, spears a chunk of chicken. “Like shit.”

(Kevin frowns at Karen as she wolfs down a burger, shoes on, coat on, ready to jump out the door and into Todd’s pickup, to leave him behind. “You know all our food tastes like crap, right?”)

Next time she’ll tell him, Karen thinks as she grins across the table and Frank grins back, almost easy. A regular good old boy, the type who’d have come sauntering into Penny’s Place, parked himself at the counter and asked her how the coffee was. She’ll slip it into the conversation, not too smooth. Not like Kevin’s death doesn’t mean anything to her. It means everything, started everything, and next time she’ll tell Frank, spill all the ugliness out between them; she will. Karen promises herself she will.

***

“You don’t think he’ll ever be ready for that, huh?” David asks. For some reason they were talking about holidays, big family celebrations like Christmas and Hanukkah, before the conversation looped around to Frank. As usual.  

(Snapshots: Carving up a turkey, joining hands to say grace. A toddler—Frankie? Lisa?—in his lap. Maria’s dark head dipped close to his.)

“I don’t think he wants to be ready.”

***

“Dad, listen, for New Year I was thinking—”

“I’m not ready, Karen.”

“Dad—”

***

When she finally breaks and decides enough is enough, tonight it’s all coming out, the decision has nothing to do with Karen’s good intentions and everything to do with a few split-seconds’ worth of stress curdled into anger, some kind of panic. Dad’s stopped picking up her calls, which means he’s either let the phone bills slide again or he’s switched to a new number without telling her; the article she’s pitched to four different sites so far isn’t going anywhere fast; she’s tired, exhausted from the endless amount of days she waited for Dad, for Frank, for herself to be able to just dial the number, just open her mouth, just say—

“I killed him. I flipped the car and I killed him.”

There isn’t even a pause on the other end. Karen has to wonder if Frank thinks at all before he says, “I’m coming over.”

She says, “Okay.”

“Karen.”

She’s pacing back and forth, the buzz searing under her skin and her mind all over the place, already regretting this. “Yeah?”

“It’s going to take me around thirty minutes,” Frank says. “You got something you can keep yourself occupied with in the meantime?”

“Research,” she tells him, toneless. Then, “Wait, did I tell you this happened years ago?” Karen lets out a snort that sounds closer to a hiccup. “Not exactly urgent.”

“Thirty minutes,” Frank says. Doesn’t bother snapping at the bait. “Take care.”

“Okay.”

***

In the very last picture she has of Kevin, he’s a lump covered by a sheet and strapped to a gurney, wheeled up into bright light while she stays behind. Funny part is, the picture of Frank that sticks in her mind as the last, despite everything that came after it, isn’t much different. Karen sees Frank silhouetted in the light leaking through the shack’s doorway, and her first thought? It’s whip-quick and selfish— _You’re really going to do this? You’re going to leave me? Now?_

***

You’d think it would be easier, even accounting for the weeks she spent dragging her feet. Karen’s already told Foggy. Matt, too. Ellison knows the bare bones of it, just like Ben did, and she’s pretty sure David would cop to the same if she asked. But. But, but, but. Frank’s different. She’s never been able to convince herself otherwise. Gave up trying to.

Her story—worn and familiar at this point—works its way out of Karen in jagged bursts like it’s been corroding inside her. She wonders if this is how Frank feels every time he comes back, learning to talk with other people all over again, stumbling through and just about ready to quit trying. It doesn’t matter. It’s not going to make her feel better, or bring Kevin back. What’s done _is_ ; she can’t patch it back together. There’s no good reason to dump it on Frank and hope he’ll absolve her in some way.

By the time Karen finishes it’s been at least an hour. She keeps staring at her closed laptop and the printouts scattered across her coffee table instead of looking across to Frank. He’s sitting on the opposite end of her couch, a comfortable distance away. Probably bent forward, his head turned to her, his hands clamped together and his arms resting on his thighs. Karen’s seen the exact pose so many times she could trace it with a finger, picture it crystal-clear. Not that it makes her feel any better. She feels balled-tight, resentful (of him, of herself). She wants him gone, but she doesn’t want him to leave.

After what feels like another hour she says, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Frank says. She can’t get a read on his tone and decides not to bother with his expression, either. “I know that, Karen.”

The resentment spikes. “Yeah, well, I’ve been saying that for years. And it’s never been enough.”

No answer.

Karen feels her hands clench. Her nails, too long, bend against her palms, but the throb feels far away, not a part of her. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. Again, “I’m sorry, I know how that sounds—”

She’s crying, suddenly. And suddenly his arms are around her. Frank smells sour, woody, a reek of sweat and sawdust that Karen presses her nose to, hides her face against. Sobs pump out almost mechanically in sharp, dry bursts, and her ribs ache.

“Shh, shh, shh.” His breath against her ear. “You’re okay, huh? You’re okay.”

She disentangles herself, pushes him away.

“For Christ’s sake—”

“Of all people,” Karen snaps, scuffing her face dry with the back of one hand. “I thought you could tell me something different.”

Frank shakes off that whiplash quick enough; on his feet and pacing he’s huge, footfalls rattling her floor while Karen glares up at him. “What do you want me to do,” he growls finally, “You want to tell you you’re a piece of shit? Is that what you want?”

“What do you think?”

He sits down. The couch springs groan. Frank grabs for Karen’s arm, and she tries to pull it away, but it’s a half-hearted yank, more of a challenge for him to pull her closer. Frank does, until their knees knock together and she’s practically on top of him. “Tell me,” Karen says. She’s still blinking back tears, her pulse is beating in her throat, in the wrist he’s squeezing white. “Tell me,” she repeats, her mouth acid, corroded. “I can take it.”

Frank, close enough that she feels the gust of his breath. “I can’t.”

Karen thinks, _Too close, too late._

His other hand is on her. Rough, a blister bubbling up under one of the calluses. “I can’t do that, Karen.” _I can’t give you what you want._

She closes her eyes. “You’re tired.” Exhausted; they both are. “I shouldn’t have made you come. S—”

“Stop that.” He’s thumbing over her cheeks, first one, then the other, smearing tear tracks dry. “You got nothing to be sorry for with me,” Frank says. “You know that.”

“That’s not true. You know that.”

He’s quiet a minute, and Karen—she could help herself, but she doesn’t—presses closer, her free hand circling over his hand, the one still squeezing her wrist. She squeezes back. Frank watches her. Frank looks at her, and— “I’m the wrong guy to be telling you that the past is in the past.”

“I know that. I know.”

He bends toward her. Karen parts her lips, barely holding back a sob.

***

Frank pinches the hem of her shirt. “Arms up.”

She obeys. Waits for him to unhook her bra and slide it off, too; then Karen reaches for his belt buckle.

“Not yet,” he says. His breath is coming a little faster, but Frank isn’t panting yet. Neither is she. “Give me a second, okay?”

She almost has to close her eyes again, watching him watch her, goose pimples racing up her ribs and her breasts slumping downward without the bra. Still unsteady, her face still damp, Karen stretches. The armrest digs into her back. “Fine. But you better be enjoying the view.”

The sound he makes is half a grunt, half a laugh. Frank bends lower until his head rasps under Karen’s chin and his lips are on her collarbone. He works his way down, very slowly, very carefully. She holds him, feels it well up in both of them like water, like an ocean.

***

_I can’t do that. Can’t give you what you want._

Frank gives her what he has, and Karen, hoping that what she gives in return is enough, or that he knows she hopes it’s enough, that it’s all she has, loses herself to it.

Mouth to his skin, the salty tang of sweat. Saltwater. Mouth to his scars, her tongue there, a quick scrape of teeth.

His groan working up through her, gravel in his throat.

Her mouth to his ear, wordless. There’s nothing left to say.

***

Afterward—“You weren’t waiting on my call, were you?” She’d say _I thought you needed the space,_ but that’s half-true at best. Karen wanted him back him back as much as she didn’t, wanted him by her side in the church and miles away so he wouldn’t be able to see the mess it turned her into, Kevin fresh dug up again, an open wound.

They moved to her bed about halfway through, and now Frank shifts, repositioning a pillow behind his back. “Every day,” he says, matter-of-fact, then glances at her. “It’s okay. We’re here now, yeah?”

Karen doesn’t answer. Instead she moves closer, throws one arm across him and rests her head on his chest. She closes her eyes. Frank’s scars, his fingers running through her hair, the ache lodged deep inside her—she’s dreamed this all, felt this all, a hundred times before.

***

Karen dreams they’re grouped around a campfire in the woods she remembers from back home. Frank’s teaching Kevin how to pick out a tune on the guitar. She’s sitting across from them, too close to the pit. Her legs are roasting hot, and the air lit up by the scatters of sparks bursting into it is cooler, heavy and peaceful.

“Uh-huh,” Frank says. “Just like that.” He looks up and shoots a grin at Karen. “I think we might have a real talent on our hands.”

“The next Keith Richards?”

Kevin’s laugh is high and clear. Karen wakes at the sound of it and reaches out to the warm, battered bulk of Frank, muttering in his sleep beside her.

**Author's Note:**

> Title swiped from "Shelter from the Storm" by Bob Dylan.


End file.
